Novel Trench Novels & Stories

No permanence. Only movement. The Sub-Zero trenches had become their refuge—long, narrow cuts carved into the frozen earth, covered with scavenged steel and ice slabs. They slept beneath the ground like corpses waiting to be buried properly. When they hunted, they did it fast. Brutal. Efficient. Raw meat. Still steaming in the cold. Because smoke meant death. Drone strikers patrolled the skies now—silent hunters that scanned for heat signatures. One flame, one flicker of warmth, and missiles would fall like divine judgment.

lifestyle was pushing the Union to the breaking point. While the surface of Novus played dead, the real war began five miles beneath the "Data-Glass" forest of the North. If they couldn't fight in the sky, they would fight in the foundations. Audrey and the High Architect conceived the "Glass-Trench Offensive"—a plan to turn the crystalline archives into a massive, subterranean "Rail-Gun."

I gazed upon the masterpiece that Wise had crafted, a battlefield like no other. Stretching before me were rows upon rows of trenches, meticulously dug to a depth of at least eight feet. Thankfully, the unforgiving terrain surrounding Ice Demon City stood firm, refusing to crumble under our feet. Oh, if only we were facing mere humans instead of the savage beastmen, a six-foot trench would have sufficed. But Wise, ever the strategist, had foreseen the need for extra protection.

Not the passion of the lodge or the outlaw camaraderie of the alley, but the bitter, still companionship of soldiers in a trench, holding out for dawn and the coming attack. They had receded, but receded together, into a transient, exposed citadel built not of words, but of a choice, and the awful, beautiful silence that came after.

"I’ve already factored in the cost of the replacement ironwork. It is still forty percent cheaper than losing an entire month’s worth of rye to black mold. If a single horse goes lame, they can butcher it for the trench rations. We don't have the luxury of coddling teamsters while the southern border is vulnerable." Torin’s scarred face tightened into a rare, respectful smile. "They'll grumble into their ale, but they'll obey. Your math hasn't missed yet and the men know it. What about the structural reinforcements? The lower trench line near the marsh is shifting under the rainfall. If the retaining walls give way, the eastern redoubt is exposed."

I told him, and I didn't give him another second to look at the money before I pulled the trigger and let his heavy body slide down into the dark mud of the trench. ​"Paolo, tip that iron drum over right now so none of our boys touch the water, and then drag this piece of garbage down into the lower well where the old bones are stacked," I ordered as I wiped the grease from my gun slide and looked toward the tunnel exit where the rain was starting to seep through the brickwork again. ​The distant rumble of heavy trucks moving toward the northern highway echoed through the ventilation shafts and confirmed that the Butcher's army had swallowed the bait.

A Kingdom Without Graves Kieran's POV Dawn bled across the orchard like a wound that refused to close. Frost clung to the blackened stumps in heavy lace, every branch a brittle finger pointing back at the keep's cracked bones. Kieran stood alone at the old south trench, boots buried in a drift that had swallowed half the barricade timber they'd piled there weeks ago. The brine barrels were empty now , their rusted hoops poked through the snow like ribs.

Beyond that, a tunnel kinked left toward the lower valley, as if the mountain itself were turning its head away from what men demanded of it. Targets had been improvised where the tunnel opened to night: hulks of captured British equipment dragged into a gully—an old Matilda’s plate set on trestles; a truck door hung from rebar; a welded box meant to pretend it was a pillbox. Rain sheened everything, turned edges to menace. “Laden.” (Load.)

The silence that followed was almost reverent. Kira added one more thing. “There’s a site. Not on any old map. A deep-archive artifact buried in the Event Trench. Coordinates are embedded in the signal, but only if you know how to listen for them.” Callum sighed. “And you already decoded them, didn’t you?” She grinned. “Pack warm. You’re heading below sea level.” The trench was a scar on the world. A place where tectonic memory curled into itself, hiding things no satellite dared stare at for long. The descent took hours. Layers of pressure closed around us like fists. Lights flickered. Hull integrity held, barely.

The Trench of the Discarded For the next four hours, a miracle of desperation unfolded. Shifters who could no longer shift worked side by side with humans who had been their enemies just a day before. They used the wreckage of the Aethelgard towers to build barricades. Sarah taught the shifters how to use kinetic-slug rifles; Roric showed the "Glitches" how to track movement in the dark using old pack-hunting formations. They were building the Trench of the Discarded.